How can companies tackle these problems and take on the emerging responsibilities related to realizing a sustainable world?

The good news is that, in many organizations, there’s already someone poised to lead the charge: sustainability managers.

Traditionally, sustainability managers have focused on developing stakeholder and environmental strategies for companies, but they must now expand their influence to the fields of innovation and technology. Specifically, it is time for sustainability managers to step up and take on challenges in four critical areas:

While Hawaii pursues its commitment to reach 100 percent renewable energy in the electricity sector by 2045, the state is progressing on a parallel track to make better use of the energy it already has.

Improving energy efficiency is the most cost-effective way to move Hawaii forward before adding new generation capacity, according to experts, and will reduce dependence on fossil fuels in the state with the most expensive electricity costs in the United States.

"We know that we need to continue doing both: work on the reduction of energy consumption at the same time that we move forward with clean, sustainable energy systems," said David Ige, governor of Hawaii, during his opening remarks to the VERGE Hawaii conference in Honolulu. "That’s the best way to make the biggest impact on our environment."

Shaped like a panda bear when viewed from above, this is the first such installation the company, Panda Green Energy, has completed under its collaborative agreement with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). China Merchants New Energy Group (CMNE) signed an agreement with the UNDP last September to build panda-shaped PV projects, as part of efforts to raise awareness about sustainable development among young people in China.

The electricity generated by the array is expected to contribute to the reduction of roughly 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

For me, it’s mostly about the internet of things (IoT). If you think back to the dim and distant past of the Third Industrial Revolution — which was centred around information technology and digitization — applications were about people or IT processes communicating. But now it’s machines and devices that are communicating, continuously and in ever greater numbers. The promise of real-time enterprise — organizations that can respond to need and demand instantaneously — is finally becoming a reality.

Digital transformation is opening up new opportunities for organizations by transforming costs, improving customer experiences, generating operational efficiencies and creating whole new business models. And fundamental to the success of the digital business is the network. It’s only the network that can bring this choice of services together, and deliver the performance and great user experience your customers will demand.

On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power.

Well, actually better than free. California produced so much solar power on those days that it paid Arizona to take excess electricity its residents weren’t using to avoid overloading its own power lines.

It happened on eight days in January and nine in February as well. All told, those transactions helped save Arizona electricity customers millions of dollars this year, though grid operators declined to say exactly how much. And California also has paid other states to take power.

The number of days that California dumped its unused solar electricity would have been even higher if the state hadn’t ordered some solar plants to reduce production — even as natural gas power plants, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, continued generating electricity.

"A key question in the debate is when California will be able to rely on renewable power for most or all of its needs and safely phase out fossil fuel plants, which regulators are studying. The answer depends in large part on how fast battery storage improves, so it is cheaper and can store power closer to customers for use when the sun isn’t shining. Solar proponents say the technology is advancing rapidly, making reliance on renewables possible far sooner than previously predicted, perhaps two decades or even less from now — which means little need for new power plants with a life span of 30 to 40 years."

Many new ideas may be considered in tax reform discussions. One idea is clean tax cuts—the application of supply-side tax-rate cuts for clean investments that reduce pollutant emissions. Lower tax rates for income from clean investments (where clean is specifically defined) will encourage such investments and could leverage large amounts of private capital. Clean tax cuts may be particularly appealing in markets where investment returns are passed on to individuals and included on individual tax returns.

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

U.S. Congress is likely to tackle federal tax reform in 2017 and may consider new ideas. One proposal it should seriously consider is clean tax cuts---the application of supply-side tax rate cuts to investments that reduce the emissions of harmful pollutants. Cutting tax rates on income gained from clean investments such as energy efficiency improvements could incentivize investors to tap large amounts of private capital.

The Grace Richardson Fund (GRF), an organization with conservative roots and an interest in addressing climate change and other environmental issues, is promoting the clean tax cut concept. Their view is that conservatives tend to see traditional tax incentives as wasteful, but are interested in tax cuts. They believe that reducing taxes on income from clean investments could increase these investments substantially and help clean the environment. GRF worked with the Sabin Center at Columbia University and the Rocky Mountain Institute on a charrette to explore and refine the clean tax cut concept. The resulting report spells out the concept in more detail.

Mayor Dale Ross of Georgetown, Texas, has become a media darling, as a conservative Republican who backs solar and wind power.

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

"Despite its rich history in the petroleum industry, Texas has become a national leader in renewable electric power because of its ample supplies of both sun and wind. “We started in 2008 with the goal of getting 30 percent of our power from renewables by 2030,” Ross said. But improved technology in solar panels and more accessible transmission lines allowed the city to become much more ambitious."

A simple tweak to an existing law could help the city reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

"If buyers and renters value energy efficiency, or at least the savings on utility bills that come with it, improving the disclosure of energy-performance information should help increase demand for high scoring properties and encourage investments and upgrades in others."

"Fossil fuels have two major problems that paint a dim picture for their future energy dominance. These problems are inter-related but still should be discussed separately.

First, they cause climate change. We know that, we’ve known it for decades, and we know that continued use of fossil fuels will cause enormous worldwide economic and social consequences.

Second, fossil fuels are expensive. Much of their costs are hidden, however, as subsidies. If people knew how large their subsidies were, there would be a backlash against them from so-called financial conservatives. A study was just published in the journal World Development that quantifies the amount of subsidies directed toward fossil fuels globally, and the results are shocking. The authors work at the IMF and are well-skilled to quantify the subsidies discussed in the paper."

This year seems to be a particularly bad fire season, with record breaking conflagrations stretching from the US to Europe to Russia.
Via SustainOurEarth

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

The United States Forest Service is reporting that 2017 is shaping up to be a worse than average fire year based on acres of federal, private and state land burned. So far, 5.6 million acres of land has burned this year, or 1.8 million acres more than the ten year average of 3.8 million acres burned by this time. Some states like Nevada are saying that 2017 is the worst fire season in 15 years, while Montana has already used up much of its firefighting budget, even as much of the state remains in drought conditions according to the US Drought Monitor.

The first months of 2017 are the second hottest ever recorded. Read on.
Via SustainOurEarth

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

"The year's warmth is just another piece of evidence supporting what climate scientists have said for over a decade. Put simply, the climate has lost its chill. Due to human behaviors—namely, releasing greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere—the climate is warming up, and that's leading to increasingly volatile weather."

The oil giant’s New Energies division launched last year with an annual investment budget of just $200 million.

Royal Dutch Shell is accelerating its move into alternative energy, with plans to spend up to $1 billion per year on its New Energies division by 2020, CEO Ben van Beurden said at conference in Istanbul on Monday.

The budget increase comes as success in the clean energy sector is raising questions about the long-term business model for fossil fuel majors. According to a recent report from Wood Mackenzie, renewables will be the fastest-growing primary energy source worldwide over the next 20 years, with average annual growth rates of 6 percent for wind and 11 percent for solar. Demand for oil, meanwhile, is forecast to grow just 0.5 percent per year.

British think tank Chatham House published a research paper last year that concluded oil majors must completely restructure their business model or face a “nasty, brutish and short” end within 10 years, due largely to low crude prices and tightening carbon regulations.

30 June, 2017 – Where can the climate refugees go, if 2 billion are driven away by rising tides, and the interior available becomes ever more inhospitable?

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

“The colliding forces of human fertility, submerging coastal zones, residential retreat, and impediments to inland resettlement are a huge problem,” said Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell University, in New York state.

“We offer preliminary estimates of the lands unlikely to support new waves of climate refugees due to the residues of war, exhausted natural resources, declining net primary productivity, desertification, urban sprawl, land concentration, ‘paving the planet’ with roads, and greenhouse gas storage zones offsetting permafrost melt.”

In any concerted attempts to contain climate change and limit global warming, climate scientists have to consider two big things. One is: how to drastically reduce fossil fuel use. The other is: how to use the land surface so that it takes up atmospheric carbon dioxide most efficiently.

CoPower lets people with just $5,000 help support green bonds that fund simple efficiency updates. Want to do that in the U.S.? You need to be a millionaire.

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

“There are lots of market driven and profitable solutions to social and environmental problems and lots of investors seeking social and environmental returns,” says Trish Nixon, CoPower’s director of investments, in an interview. “The challenge is in connecting the two and having financial products that meet the needs of investors from a risk-return-impact and access standpoint. That’s the problem that CoPower is solving.”

It’s time for us to come together as a global community and actually accomplish all 17 of these Global Goals. Solar energy is one solution that's ready.

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

"Since the end of World War II, there’s been this shared belief that we can collectively solve the world’s biggest problems. We’ve made tremendous progress, but the Sustainable Development Goals show that there is more to do. For example, the total number of people living in poverty is nearly the same as it was back then.

The SDGs represent the final frontier of the grand experiment that was post-WWII reconstruction. It’s time for us to come together as a global community and actually accomplish all 17 of these Global Goals. Part of this means prioritizing the 1.2 billion people without access to electricity, especially the populations in places where we’re seeing civil unrest and unmet social needs. The West needs to redouble our efforts to support these governments in providing sufficient social services.

The technology is here, and it’s ready. The political willpower has to be there, too."

Princeton-Rutgers study finds sharp increase in risk of frequent deluges, with New York City, Seattle and San Diego among cities expected to be hit

Stephane Bilodeau's insight:

"The research found that if emissions are not curbed, San Francisco and Seattle would both get a 100-year flood every year by 2050, while San Diego would expect 10 such events annually and Key West in Florida would be hit 11 times a year. Some of the worst affected areas would be in Hawaii, with Mokuoloe island, situated off Oahu, forecast to be deluged by 130 floods a year that are currently considered to be 100-year events.

Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton climate scientist and co-author of the paper, added that New York City is set to get a 100-year flood every 20 years by 2050 but this frequency would leap to a large flood every other month by 2100."

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.